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This is the first book in healthcare ethics addressing the moral issues regarding ownership of the human body. Modern medicine increasingly transforms the body and makes use of body parts for diagnostic, therapeutic and preventive purposes. The book analyzes the concept of body ownership. It also reviews the ownership issues arising in clinical care (for example, donation policies, autopsy) and biomedical research. Societies and legal systems also have to deal with issues of body ownership. A comparison is made between specific legal arrangements in The Netherlands and France, as examples of legal approaches. In the final section of the book, different theoretical perspectives on the human body are analyzed: libertarian, personalist, deontological and utilitarian theories of body ownership.
List of contents
Medicine, Ownership, and the Human Body; H.A.M.J. ten Have, J.V.M. Welie. Part I: Ownership Issues in Clinical Care and Biomedical Research. Autopsy; B. Blasszauer. Defining the Functional Body and its Parts: A Review of German Law; F. Heubel. Why Should Remunerated Blood Donation be Unethical? Ethical Reflections on Current Blood Donation Policies and their Philosophical Origins; H.A.E. Zwart. Biomedical Research with Human Body `Parts'; W. Dekkers, H.A.M.J. ten Have. Part II: The History and Concept of Body Ownership. Ownership of the Human Body: Some Historical Remarks; D. Gracia. The Stick, the Eye, and Ownership of the Body; Z. Szawarski. Part III: Medical Interventions and Statutory Foundations. Ownership of the Human Body: The Dutch Context; J.V.M. Welie, H.A.M.J. ten Have. Ownership of the Human Body: Judicial and Legislative Responses in France; A. Fagot-Largeault. Part IV: Ownership of the Body: Theoretical Perspectives. Libertarianism and Ownership of the Human Body; K.W. Wildes, S.J. Ownership of the Body: A Personalist Perspective; P. Schotsmans. Property, Rights, and the Body: The Danish Context - A Democratic Ethics or Recourse to Abstract Right; U.J. Jensen. Ownership of the Human Body: Deontological Approaches; F.J. Illhardt. The Utility of the Body; M. Evans. Notes on Contributors. Index.
About the author
Henk A. ten Have studied medicine and philosophy at Leiden University, the Netherlands. He received his medical degree in 1976 from Leiden University and his philosophy degree in 1983. He worked as a researcher in the Pathology Laboratory, University of Leiden (1976-77), as a practicing physician in the Municipal Health Services, City of Rotterdam (1978-79), and as a Professor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Limburg, Maastricht (1982-91). From 1991 he was a Professor of Medical Ethics and the Director of the Department of Ethics, Philosophy and History of Medicine in the University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. In September 2003 he joined UNESCO as Director of the Division of Ethics of Science and Technology. In 2010 he was appointed as Director of the Center for Healthcare Ethics, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh.
Summary
This is the first book in healthcare ethics addressing the moral issues regarding ownership of the human body. In the final section of the book, different theoretical perspectives on the human body are analyzed: libertarian, personalist, deontological and utilitarian theories of body ownership.
Report
`This work is another excellent publication from the collection PHILOSOPHY AND MEDICINE... Ownership iof the Human Body is an excellent work for a systematized, wide and deep study of a theme of great impact for the domain of health care, and clearly decisive for the contemporary concept of person and society that we are building for ourselves.' Ethical Perspectives, 6:3/4 (1999)
